by Adam Mitzner
My father used to say that you could tell the difference between a tennis player and someone who plays tennis by the way they hold a racquet. Those who were more than recreational players had a way of making it appear that the racquet was an extension of their arm. I was a tennis player, my father told me on many an occasion, whereas he merely played tennis. Sometimes he also mentioned that Michael Ohlig was a tennis player too.
Elizabeth holds a brush in that same way, leaving no doubt that she’s a painter, and not just someone who paints. But since Charlotte’s birth, it’s a sight I’ve rarely seen. In fact, I don’t think Elizabeth’s painted other than with our daughter since she was born. The last time I asked Elizabeth about it, which was more than two years ago, she said that she was just too busy, pointing to Charlotte as Exhibit One.
I excuse myself to take a shower. I’ve been under the water for only a few minutes when I hear a hard knock on the door.
“What?” I yell after turning off the water.
“Honey, open the door,” Elizabeth says.
“I’m in the shower.”
“I know. You need to get out of the shower and open the door, please.” She says this forcefully, like when she commands Charlotte to take a time-out.
I pull the door open a crack and poke my lathered head through the small opening. “What? Can’t I shower in peace?”
“Alex, there are two policemen here to see you,” she says, looking frightened.
I’m done in thirty seconds. I dry off and put on a T-shirt and jeans to walk out to our living room, where I see that one of the policemen is actually a policewoman. She is much younger than her partner; so young, in fact, that I wonder if she might still be in training.
I wait, saying nothing for an awkward moment, assuming one of them will explain their presence. The female officer finally does the honors.
“I’m Officer Kenney and this is Officer Michaud. We’ve just explained to your wife that we received a call from the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Department. Apparently they had your address, but no phone number. They want you to call them as soon as possible. You’re supposed to ask for a Deputy John Gattia.”
She hands me a business card, with the back facing me. On it, in red pen, someone has written John Gattia—561-555-4242—Palm Beach. I expect one of them to tell me why I should call the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Department, but they act as if their mission is complete.
“What’s this about?” I finally ask, although I might as well have said, What did Michael Ohlig do now?
“We honestly don’t know, sir,” the male officer replies.
I go into the bedroom and shut the door behind me. Looking at the back of Officer Kenney’s card, I dial John Gattia’s phone number.
“Hi, is this Officer Gattia?” I say to the first person who answers.
“No. Who may I say is calling?”
“This is Alex Miller. I got a message from the New York City Police Department that I was to call this number and ask for Officer Gattia.”
“Yes, sir, please hold.”
A click, a moment of silence, and then I hear, “This is Deputy Sheriff Gattia,” in a smooth-sounding voice.
“Officer Gattia, my name is Alex Miller. I was told by the police in New York City to call you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Miller. Are you the son of Barbara Miller?”
All of a sudden it feels like I’ve been punched in the gut. I don’t say anything, unable to fathom the change of direction. This isn’t about Michael Ohlig at all.
“Mr. Miller? Mr. Miller, are you still there?”
“Yes,” I finally say, although it sounds like little more than a squeak. It is apparently loud enough for Gattia, however, as he keeps talking.
“I’m very sorry to inform you of this over the phone. Your mother’s body was found this morning washed up on the beach. We believe she drowned.”
I take a deep breath before saying anything. I’m consumed with the mental image of my mother washing up on the sand, like in a movie. I can almost see her face, tinged in blue. But then another thought hits me, one equally disturbing. “What do you mean you believe she drowned? What else could it be?”
Now the silence is on the other end of the line. More time elapses than I think should be necessary given that Officer Gattia should have anticipated this question. “That’s the most likely scenario. But until we conclude the autopsy, there’s no way to know for certain the exact cause of death.”
I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.
Elizabeth enters our bedroom and says she heard me crying. I’m still sitting on the bed. The phone is next to me. Even though Elizabeth must know that the only news from Palm Beach that would cause me to break down would be something terrible happening to my mother, she doesn’t ask.
“My mother is dead,” I say to break the silence.
“Oh my God, Alex. I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“I don’t know. The police officer just said they found her body washed up on the beach.”
“Your mother was in the ocean?”
That was also my first thought. My mother hated the ocean. Whenever we’d come to visit, we’d make a point to take Charlotte to the beach, but my mother never came. Even though the town was called Boynton Beach, she often joked that she didn’t even know there was an actual beach.
“I’ve told you everything I know,” I say.
Despite my statement, she asks another question. “When?”
“I don’t know, Elizabeth. I assume yesterday. When did I last speak to her?”
“Did you call her yesterday?”
“I did, but I left a message. I assumed she was already at the Thanksgiving dinner at the clubhouse.”
“Do they have any idea how it happened? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know.”
I take a very deep breath, the kind that fills your lungs completely and makes a noise when it’s exhaled. With nothing more to say, I walk over to my closet and pull out my weekend bag.
“You’re going to go down there today?” Elizabeth asks.
“Yeah. I’m going to have to make the arrangements.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing.”
I’m now throwing underwear in the bag along with my dress socks. I pull my darkest suit out of the closest, a three button that I wore to my father’s funeral, and throw it on the bed.
“Is it tacky if I wear the exact same thing as I did at my father’s funeral?”
“Alex, could you please stop just for a moment? Talk to me. Please.”
I nod, and walk over to the bed. Elizabeth is sitting beside my half-filled overnight bag, and I take a seat next to her on the edge of the bed. As soon as I sit down, she puts her hand over mine.
I sniffle, but it doesn’t hold back my tears, and so I wipe both my eyes. “There’s one thing you can do for me, Elizabeth. It would mean a lot.”
“Okay.”
“Please bring Charlotte to Florida. She doesn’t have to come to the cemetery if you’re still concerned about it being too scary, but I really want her to come down.”
This was something of a bitter fight we had in the aftermath of my father’s death. Elizabeth was adamant that Charlotte not make the trip to Florida, and I argued the other side just as vehemently.
“If it’s really that important to you, Alex, I’ll bring her down.”
“It is,” I tell her. “Thank you.”
26
On my way to the airport, I call Abby.
“Boy, you really are a slave driver,” she says without saying hello. “I was just about to head into the office. Why don’t you come across the park and pick me up?”
“Can’t. I’m actually on my way to Florida.”
“Florida? What did Ohlig do now?”
“It has nothing to do with him. My mother died last night.”
“Oh my God, Alex. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank
s.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Unfortunately, yes. You’re going to need to call Pavin and see about getting an adjournment. Get as much time as you can out of him. Once you’ve agreed, send a letter to Judge Sullivan.”
“How?”
I know what she means, of course, but I want to show her that I’m not so grief stricken that I can’t still banter. “How do you send a letter to a judge? You stick it in an envelope and then put it in the mailbox.”
“Very funny. No, I mean, how did your mother die? Unless you don’t want to talk about it. I don’t mean to pry.”
“You know I don’t keep any secrets from you, Abby. It appears—the police say nothing’s for certain until after an autopsy is conducted—that she drowned. The ocean,” I add.
“I’m so sorry,” she says again. “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do? Can I help with any of the arrangements?”
“Thank you again, but I’ve got it under control. I’m going to meet with the Palm Beach sheriff tomorrow and then I’ll make all the arrangements. With any luck, the funeral will be on Sunday and I can come right home.”
“Can I come down for the funeral … or would that just be too weird?”
“I don’t think it would be weird,” I reply. The truth is I’m sure that Elizabeth would find it quite strange for Abby to spend a thousand dollars to fly down to Florida and stay overnight in a hotel just to attend her boss’s mother’s funeral. How would I explain that one? “But it isn’t necessary. What I really need is for you to hold down the fort here. Judge Sullivan may want to hear from you in person.”
“Okay. I could come down today and then come right back, if you want.” Before Elizabeth arrives, I assume she means. “Just so you’re not doing all of this alone.”
I wonder why Abby thinks I’m doing this alone. I suppose it’s because I’ve called her from the cab, something she knows I wouldn’t do with Elizabeth sitting next to me. It’s another one of those little tells that indicates that Abby, too, knows our relationship is over the line.
“Thank you, but stay there and deal with Pavin and Judge Sullivan. I’ll call you tonight, as soon as I get in, and we can talk more.”
“Okay, but remember, the offer doesn’t expire. Just ask.”
While I’m waiting in the airport, I call Ohlig.
“Good morning, counselor,” he says, sounding as cheerful as ever.
“Not exactly. I’m sorry to have some bad news—my mother died last night.”
“What?”
“The police came to my house this morning and told me to call the Palm Beach sheriff’s office. They told me she had drowned. In the ocean.”
Neither one of us says anything for a good twenty seconds. Then, he breaks the silence.
“I’m so sorry, Alex.” He sounds shaken; something I didn’t think was possible. “I just don’t know what to say. Is there anything I can do?”
“Thank you, but no. I’m flying down now to make some arrangements. The funeral will most likely be on Sunday. And don’t worry, Michael, Abby is making an application to get more time from Judge Sullivan. I know you wanted to start the trial and soon as possible, but—”
“Alex, please don’t concern yourself with my problems today. Take as much time as you need.”
“Thank you. That’s very nice of you to say, and I do very much appreciate it.”
“She was swimming alone in the ocean?”
I stop to consider that same question again. I assumed she had been alone if only because no one had reported her missing, but then a far worse possibility enters my mind. She could have been with a friend who was also swept up in the current or whatever caused her death, and whose body just hadn’t been found yet. As tragic as that would be, it would at least make more sense than my mother swimming alone. But wouldn’t that other person have a family or someone who would have reported her missing by now? Then again, I hadn’t realized my mother was missing and wouldn’t have for at least a few more days. I was going to call her this weekend, but if she wasn’t home I wouldn’t become concerned for at least two days after that. Maybe there’s a son somewhere who has no idea his mother has died.
“I don’t know the circumstances,” I tell Ohlig. “I didn’t ask many questions. I was pretty stunned.”
Confronted with how much I still don’t know about the final moments of my mother’s life and the realization that she must have felt so alone in the water, I begin to cry, my sadness coupled with embarrassment that Ohlig is a witness to this breakdown.
“I’m sorry, Michael, you’ll have to pardon me,” I say, sniffling back tears.
“Alex, no apologies are necessary or appropriate. I can’t imagine how terrible this is for you. I mean, we’re all still reeling from the shock of your father’s death, and now this. I’m … words just don’t capture it, but I’m so very sorry.”
Whenever I work past Charlotte’s bedtime, which is most nights, I call at around eight o’clock to say goodnight. Charlotte, however, has little interest in talking on the phone, so it’s our family routine for Charlotte to ask Elizabeth to find out if I have a message for her. After Elizabeth repeats the query, I ask Elizabeth to tell Charlotte that I love her. The message received, Charlotte then asks Elizabeth to tell me that she loves me too.
Elizabeth has dismissed any meaning in this ritual, claiming it’s nothing more than a manifestation of Charlotte’s enjoyment of word games. I’m not so sure. There’s something about it that seems like an effort to hold Elizabeth and me together, the way Charlotte is able to get us to say “I love you” to each other.
When Elizabeth gets on the phone this evening, we talk about the travel plans. She tells me she’s on a flight tomorrow afternoon and should arrive by dinner time. Then she revisits the same discussion we had before I left.
“I know you asked me to bring Charlotte, and I will if you really want me to. I just wanted to tell you again that I’m worried that it’s going to be very upsetting to her.”
I sigh into the phone. “It’s going to upsetting for everyone, Elizabeth.”
“I know, but she’s five.”
“Please, I don’t want to argue with you about this. It’s very important to me. I let you win when it was my father’s funeral, and I regretted it. Please.”
It is a cliché that married people have the same fight over and over, but clichés become so for a reason, and in Elizabeth’s and my case, for the better part of the last half decade, our most passionate disagreements have had much less to do with the issue at hand than they were referendums on the state of our union. This one is no different. I do not believe Elizabeth’s resistance to bringing Charlotte is solely because she believes that it will give our daughter nightmares, although that may be the case on the conscious level. Subconsciously, I suspect her opposition is rooted in the hope that if it’s just the two of us, even if only for a weekend, and even under such sad circumstances, we might remember how happy we once were. At times it seems like we’re both grasping to understand what we had then, so we can recreate it now. As if the love we once shared was lost, like car keys, and might be found simply by retracing our steps.
I wish it could be that easy. And it’s not as if I haven’t tried over the past months to pinpoint where or even when we went off track. Perhaps it’s just the life of a lawyer, the hours that keep me away from home, but that would be too much of an oversimplification, just as it would be to point to the stress of rearing Charlotte as the prime culprit. No, if anything, I think Charlotte has brought Elizabeth and me closer, not pulled us apart. Which is why I’m so insistent on having Charlotte there. It is less because I want her there, and more because I need her there, fearing that without my daughter’s presence I will be denied what, at times, seems to me to be the only reason Elizabeth and I are still together.
27
Mr. Miller?” asks the man who is approaching me in the reception area of the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Department. He does not fi
t at all with the voice that told me my mother was dead. The image in my mind was more Ricardo Montalban—tall, graying at the temples, distinguished looking. This man does not seem capable of commanding the immediate respect of the public. It’s not only his slight physical stature, probably not more than 125 pounds soaking wet, but his age, mid-twenties, I’d guess.
“Officer Gattia?” I say, having it sound more like a question than I had intended.
“That’s me,” he says, “except down here it’s Deputy.” He’s much too chipper for the circumstances at hand. As if he realizes that his tone is off, his expression changes and his eyes look to the floor. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Miller.”
“Thank you. And thank you for meeting me on a Saturday. I greatly appreciate it, because I’d like to be able to hold the funeral tomorrow.”
“I understand. I know that in the Jewish religion burials are held as soon as possible, and so I’m happy to meet with you today. Besides, it’s not like the police station closes on the weekend.”
He leads me back through the stationhouse, past the array of desks that remind me of the cop shows I’ve seen through the years. We finally arrive in a small, windowless room. Gattia asks me if I’d like any coffee, but I decline.
Through all my involvement in the criminal justice system, I’ve never actually been in a police station before. It’s common for me to become involved in a matter before an arrest has been made but, like with Ohlig, I usually deal with the prosecutor, not the police or the FBI. As a result, the whole interrogation room scene—the one-way mirror and bad coffee—is not something to which I’ve ever been privy.
“Mr. Miller,” he says after we’ve both sat down around a badly nicked wooden table, “it turns out we won’t need for you to make a formal identification. We were able to match your mother’s dental records. Of course, if you want to see her body—”